


What might have been...

by TheNightling



Category: Alexander Burgess - Fandom, Roderick Burgess - Fandom, The Sandman (Comics)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 08:27:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29311086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheNightling/pseuds/TheNightling
Summary: This story was inspired by the fact that over on his Tumblr Neil Gaiman was asked on at least two occasions that if Alexander Burgess had freed Morpheus, would he still have been condemned to eternal waking or if he would have shown mercy?  Both times Neil Gaiman answered that Morpheus would have shown mercy.  And yes, Neil Gaiman has a Tumblr.   So this is a story of what may have happened of Alexander Burgess had freed Morpheus back when he probably should have.Note: This story does contain a depiction of early twentieth century homophobia and some period accurate slurs.  Based on my own personal experiences as a non-straight person I understand if the scene might make some readers uncomfortable.  However you might find the end result of what happens to the abuser somewhat cathartic.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	What might have been...

**Author's Note:**

> Someone out there REALLY does not want me writing Sandman fiction so naturally... I had to write another. Enjoy.

What might have Been…

The boy stared intently at the glass cage in front of him. It was domed and rather egg-like in shape and tall enough to hold a man or something very man-like. The leadened quartz-crystal was as clear as any well-made window. Alexander Burgess watched the creature with the fascination of a child watching a pet lizard in a terrarium.  
The naked being in the cage stared back at him with cold intensity and a proud contempt as well. The creature was pale as chalk, and his eyes were like back pools of water with twin stars serving as pupils floating in the darkness. Later Alex would be able to compare this vision to the claimed “Grey” alien encounters he would read about in grocery store tabloid magazines. One stark difference from those creatures though was that this creature had a shock of wild, black, hair that reminded Alex of a disorderly pile of raven feathers, thick and heavy hair that framed the pale face staring out at him from behind the glass. The creature was improbably thin. It was clearly intelligent and generally humanoid.  
If Alex hadn’t seen the summoning for himself, if he had not detached himself so thoroughly from the alienness of this entity, he might have even found him beautiful or attractive. But all potential for that had been lost to fear and the unavoidable and frightening knowledge that this was not a human being.  
Alex did not know why he found The Creature so fascinating. He had discovered who and what the creature was in the Paginarum Fulvarum. The King of Dreams. That revelation had somehow not resolved his sense of curiosity. This was the being accountable for everyone’s dreams, all of humanity’s secret fantasies and all those shameful imaginings that come late at night when people are at their most vulnerable. For Alex there was a secret shame in his own dreams…  
“I hate you.” Alex whispered. It was a childish proclamation but there was some hidden pain there.  
The bony, wraith-like, creature moved his head slightly, acknowledging Alex’s words without responding verbally. He never spoke to them. 

Alex wasn’t even twenty-years-old yet but he knew he was not like other men. He was not “manly” by the usual definition of the term. And he believed that if his father knew about his secret yearnings, his Desires… He would be disowned…  
It was this thing’s fault, wasn’t it? The cruel bastard there in the box. He was the one who gave him those dreams. The dreams that Alex dared not describe to anyone. Dreams of other young men. The feel of their lips against his face. The tingle through his scalp as the lips vibrate against his earlobe as something gentle and inviting was whispered into his ear. Their affection, their touch, their love…  
How Alex dreamt of that love, that sweet, terrible, sinful love. And why? Why was this such a taboo? His father had used magick for so many cruelties. He had even killed with it. So why were his desires, ones that could never hurt anyone, considered to be so much worse? …And who decided that a form of love could be deemed evil anyway? Wasn’t love supposed to be ultimate redeemer? The ultimate absolution? As far as young Alex was concerned humans and the powerful beings that governed the universe- they were all hypocrites. All of them! Hypocrites who took pleasure in the befuddlement of others by tempting them with …with deviant dreams…

Alex had enough of staring at the alien-like boogeyman there in the cellar. He got up off the cold, damp, floor where he had been seated, eye level with the crouching, naked thing. Almost staring each other down, as if in a contest of wills neither was entirely sure about. Alex stood up. Unlike the pale creature imprisoned there, Alex could leave. He could leave at any time. …Then why did he feel just as trapped as if he was the one in the glass bubble?  
The months passed and not much had changed. Alex had grown a bit, but that was normal. He had read somewhere that some men grow until they’re twenty-five. He was taller, leaner. He discovered he needed spectacles, which wasn’t too surprising. He had squinted often when reading father’s dusty old books. 

One thing was different though. Father had hired a new gardener. A pretty, red-haired boy, barely Alex’s own age. And Alex had the distinct feeling that perhaps this young man was also… different. Different in his capacity to feel for men what most men usually only feel for women (or so Alex believed).  
It was a warm summer afternoon when Father finally took notice of Alex and the peculiar way he watched the gardener. Alex, whom he often ignored. Roderick Burgess found it distasteful and rather Crowley-esque that his own son should look at another man in that way. He watched as Alex observed the gardener. Roderick hoped what he was seeing here wasn’t what it appeared. But it seemed so. Alex was as infatuated with the near androgynous gardener boy in a way that he should only feel toward women. Well, something must be done about that! 

“Father, please!” Alex tried to shield himself with his arm as his father’s heavy, old, walking stick came crashing down on him again.  
“You are an EMBARRASSMENT! The heir to the Order of Ancient Mysteries, my ONLY son… a worthless, useless… Mary!” There was another crack from the gentleman’s cane being used in a very ungentlemanly fashion.  
“No, Father, I… Magus. Magus, Please, I-“  
“It’s that boy, isn’t it? That Elliot? Well, he doesn’t work here anymore! I sent him away. You’re lucky I don’t just stop his heart to rid myself of this shame!”  
He was one to talk of Shame. His father, the infamous occultist, rival to Aleister Crowley, head of The Order of Ancient Mysteries, and source of scandal after scandal. The papers always had something to say about Father. They never spoke about Alex. Alex knew how to keep a low profile, to keep to himself, to go virtually unnoticed in his father’s shadow.  
The threat to stop Elliot’s heart was very real. Alex knew his father had enough magick to do such a thing to someone without the occult means to defend himself.  
“No! He’s innocent!”  
“Innocent?!” What did that matter to someone like Roderick? Alex had always been too damn soft and now he had gone over to fairyland as far as Roderick was concerned. Well, at least he knew his son hadn’t soiled his bed with his deviance yet- he had not acted out his profanity in the house, at least there was that. “Look at you! You’re a disgrace!”  
Alex was cowering and crouched in the corner of his room, which was in disarray from his father’s attack. He knew he couldn’t hide what he was from him. His father was just too powerful…  
It also didn’t help that Alex had kept those old novels under his bed. The picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, a few selected Greek myths carefully bookmarked in a thick, leather-bound, volume, and the closet drama Goethe’s Faust parts 1 and 2 translated perfectly from German into English. Anyone with the ability to read between the lines, as they say, could tell what Mephisto’s relationship with Faust was really all about…  
Alex couldn’t tell what was worse, the words his father said or the cane coming down again and again. He was too afraid to fight back. There was no telling what his father or his father’s minion might do if he tried. Sometimes he had nightmares of his father’s darker wrath, much more extreme than this.  
“You dress like a fairy! Look at you! Growing your hair out like a girl, walking around in long velvet jackets like they’re frocks! You think you look like Henry Irving or something? No, you look like a little girl! No woman will ever find you attractive. I should have realized, the way you bury yourself in those books, like a little wanna-be priest.”  
Alex saw nothing wrong with dandy fashion and as for his hair, plenty of respectable men had hair longer than his. His hair wasn’t even really shaggy. Oscar Wilde’s hair had been longer than this at the time of his death. Though he knew that was, as far as his father was concerned, an awful example.  
He whimpered and tried to wait out the pain and dared not argue the accusations.  
“They stare at you, you know.” Roderick continued in his tirade to shame him.  
Alex knew the only person who actually scrutinized what he wore was his own father. He kept to himself too much to be the focus of anyone else’s attention. “You think I don’t see it? How they turn and look at you and whisper on the street what a pansy you are. Maybe if you dressed normal you wouldn’t forget you’re supposed to be a man!”  
No one was actually saying he was a pansy. That was clearly Father’s own insecurity about his masculinity talking.  
“Clean yourself up.” Roderick said, finally too exhausted to beat him anymore. And in an after-thought “If anyone asks, you fell off a horse like the clumsy idiot you are.”  
Roderick walked from the room, gentleman’s cane (if you could call it that) still clutched in his hand.  
Alex slowly pulled himself to his feet. He was trembling yet, and sniffling, trying to choke back the threatening sobs.  
Alex had long ago abandoned the childish (as he saw it) hope that a parent’s love was truly unconditional. The child in him still insisted it was supposed to be unconditional, that parents are supposed to love you and accept no matter what, and Alex still craved his father’s approval and acceptance. It had been some naïve governess from Alex’s childhood who had taught him that foolish notion he could not shake, that a parent should love you without condition. And he never could quite let go of that belief even if all of his life experiences insisted that no parent (at least his parent) could not love in that way… 

Could Roderick Burgess love at all?

Alex finally left his badly disheveled room once he was certain his father was no longer nearby. There were papers and books scattered, along with a knocked over chair and some random knickknacks. Some ceramic and glass items were broken, fragments of childhood playthings lay on the carpet.  
Something had broken tonight and it was not merely some old toys…  
Alex walked …or more precisely he stumbled, down the hall. Alex’s back ached where he had gotten the brunt of the caning. He knew the marks were going to scar. Everything ached. His shoulders, his legs, especially his back. One eye was blackened and his cheeks were red from the heat of crying. He wiped furiously at his own tears. It was foolish to cry. And it was dangerous to dream…  
He would never really be free. He was as much his father’s prisoner as the creature down in the cellar… If he tried to run away he knew his father and his magick would find him. And… he had nowhere to go anyway…  
Even if his situation was “Normal” and there was no fear of magical ramifications for his defiance, to whom could he turn? Where could he run? There was no sanctuary for someone like him…  
Alex made his way to the secret passage, to the stone staircase that spiraled its way down to the windowless chamber. He knocked on the heavy wooden door and announced himself for the two guards his father had watching the prisoner. One of the guards opened the door for him. They knew better than to question the boy’s condition but there was a slight trace of pity in at least one of them, a softening to the man’s usually unreadable expression. 

Alex managed to steadily walk to the glass cage, hiding that he was in pain. He slowly laid his hand against the cool glass. “Please leave us.”  
“But the Magus says-“ One of the men started to protest.  
“My... Father,” Alex practically spat the word, “is the one who pays you. And I speak on his behalf. Now go!”  
The men exchanged looks and then shrugged, deciding not to argue with the young man. They both were eager to have a tea and coffee break anyway. 

Alex lowered his hand and stood outside the cage. He looked at the pale, emaciated figure behind the glass. He had never changed. Not since the day they had captured him. He had not aged, nor had he grown a beard. And yet Alex felt as if he, himself, had changed so very much in that time. Changed in such a way that he saw now that he was in no better of a situation than this creature here.  
Trapped in darkness, trapped behind the glass, unable to touch or be touched. Alone… Naked, exposed. Everyone could see everything about him. And yet he- The King of Dreams- was unashamed. Proud. Not trembling or cowering from a brute of a father. Alex’s contempt for the creature mingled with long, distant fear, was now being replaced by a different emotion. Something not unlike empathy and maybe even envy. Envy at the defiance of will, envy at the hidden power that such a fragile, delicate looking thing could have…  
Almost beautiful. The King of Dreams was almost beautiful…  
Alexander Burgess saw this weakened, helpless wretch, and he saw himself. A prisoner locked away from light. A prisoner stripped of dignity. Utterly at his father’s mercy until he said or did what his father wanted… Would this proud creature eventually cower and break as Alex felt like he had broken.  
Alex bit his lip. If he freed this creature it… he might kill him… or worse…  
But maybe… Whatever his fate might be, it was better than this. Right now, as it stood, they were both prisoners. But if he freed him, this so-called King of Dreams… At least one of them would be free. And Alex would have some small revenge on his father, the Magus of The Order of Ancient Mysteries… 

Maybe it was some half-hearted attempt at self-destruction, a suicide without noose or razor- that Alex felt he would either die by this creature’s hand or by his father’s but he wanted this thing to end and let it end tonight. This felt like the only true way to end it.  
Alex had gotten a hold of the heavy brass key and placed it into the lock at the base of the crystalline cage. He was really doing it. The key fit easily into the hole of the metal base just within the binding circle’s confines. Alex dragged his foot over the old, chalk, binding circle, deliberately breaching it, as he turned the key. The crystalline cage opened at a discrete seam.

The pale figure stood up slowly, cautiously, moving like an uncertain animal. He blinked those wide, black eyes, like doe reacting to being offered food by a human.  
The King of Dreams stepped out of the cage and toward Alex. He tentatively moved beyond the binding circle as if worried that Alex might change his mind and try to stop him, or perhaps that someone else might.  
Alex stepped back but only slightly.  
Alex waited for whatever was to come next.  
The pale figure moved to him, the glassy black eyes stared at him, stared deep into his own and for a brief moment Alex felt… understood... maybe even accepted. And most importantly he felt… forgiven. Not for the sin of what he was- this creature saw that as no crime, but for how he had treated him. For taking part in the summoning spell, for being complacent in his father’s abuses and humiliation of this proud entity.  
“I’m sorry…” Alexander said, swallowing back fresh tears. “I’m sorry… It was my father, he…”  
The pale figure put a finger to his own lips.* “Shhh.”  
Alex was trembling, afraid of what he might do next. And for a second, there was such a softness to the usually cold creature and a slender hand touched Alex’s cheek but only for a brief moment.  
Alex had never heard him speak and he was startled by the soft sound of an audible voice coming from him. He didn’t say anything really other than the “Shhh.”  
Alex blinked several times. The King of Dreams moved past Alex, toward the stairs. 

Alex went to bed shortly after that as if nothing had happened. He had just felt so very tired. He tried to behave as if he had not just released his father’s prisoner. The next morning though things were different. Alex had slept peacefully and felt quite well rested. Even his black eye had seemed to have mostly healed and his back didn’t hurt anymore. There would be no scars after all. But something was wrong in the house of Fawny Rig. The servants were in a tither.  
Roderick Burgess would not wake form his sleep. He was alive. And he seemed to be dreaming. He would moan and mutter, and occasionally whimper or beg for it to stop, crying out in his sleep, but he would not waken.

Alex stood to the side of the bed. “Father! Father, please! It’s me, Alex! Please wake up! …Please.” But the situation was hopeless.  
And despite everything he had suffered at his father’s hands Alex still grieved. He wept as if his father was dead and he knew his father’s fate was worse than death. Alex still mourned. Alex still pined for what might have been, still longed for a father that would love him unconditionally and accept him for who and what he was without question. If the world’s most infamous sorcerer couldn’t even do that… who could? Who could… love him?  
Alex was scared. He had been in his father’s shadow so long he did not know how to function without him and he had been so isolated, he had so few friends. All he could do was rely on the servants, the lawyers, and his father’s money to support himself. 

His father was moved to the hospital and eventually diagnosed with some sort of Encephalitis Lethargica. A sort of brain swelling related sleeping sickness but Alexander Burgess knew better… Somehow he knew…  
His father would never wake up…

The years passed and everything that was Roderick’s passed into Alex’s hands. His father died years later in that hospital bed but Alex was not sure of his father’s nightmares were truly over. He imagined his father’s soul was still trapped somewhere, still suffering an endless nightmare leading into another nightmare, and each time he thought he was waking he would just find himself in yet another new nightmare. Somehow Alex knew this. Where his father was now condemned to eternal waking did he know his body had died or did he have a futile hope that he would one day wake up? 

The estate, Roderick’s fortune, everything was now Alex’s. No one was there to be critical or to tell Alex what to wear, how to speak, or… who he could love. And Alex eventually met a beautiful young man named Paul. Oh, how he loved Paul. They would travel to such places together. London, France, Berlin… They traveled together on a private yacht and drank Champaign on the deck as they watched the sunset over the Mediterranean Sea. There was no secret prisoner to worry about, nothing to shackle them to Fawny Rig like Dorian Gray shackled to his painting. They could go anywhere. They could do anything. They were free. 

And Alexander Burgess lived Happily Ever After… 

It was a pleasant dream. Too pleasant… 

Elderly Alexander Burgess woke in a cold sweat. There were fresh tears in his eyes. He sat up in bed and Paul was there beside him. At least there was that… At least Paul was there. Paul was real. 

But that’s not how the story played out, not really. Alex had never been brave enough to defy his father. He had not slipped down to the cellar the night that he should have. He had never freed the prisoner. Even when his father had died he had never freed the prisoner that he both resented and related to. And he had been the one punished with six years locked in a nightmare that would seem to end only to reveal a new nightmare was starting, and on and on it had gone. He had woken from that “eternal” curse to his beloved Paul waiting for him. He had been forgiven. He was relieved that Paul was here.

Paul looked at him now. “What is it, love? Did you have a bad dream?”  
Alex nodded. “I don’t know what’s worse… that nightmare that I was trapped in or…” He bit his lip before choosing the words. “…knowing I could have saved us all… saved myself…if I had just done the right thing at the right time…”  
“Hush now, darling. You’re still half-asleep. I’ll get you some tea.”  
Alex was soothed and sighed. There was no use dwelling on what might have been. But sometimes those dreams of what he could have done- what he should have done, if he had just been brave enough… Sometimes that felt so much worse than the actual punishment the Lord of Dreams had subjected him to before finally forgiving him…  
But at least he was safe now. At least he had Paul. And at least he had been forgiven. And he was loved and accepted for who and what he truly was. And his cruel, old father, was very much dead. A loveless old man was gone. But Alex was alive. Paul was alive. And they were in love. And no one could take that away from them. And Alex and The King of Dreams were both free from the shadow of Roderick Burgess forever.  
There was no point on dwelling on what might have been. That did not matter now. What mattered was the love that Alex had finally found and the freedom that he and The King of Dreams both had gained.

The End


End file.
